On the Road to the Isles

Fergusson’s friend John Ressich was not only one of his closest intellectual allies, but also a reliable source of companionship and professional support. The tours of the Scottish highlands on which he accompanied Fergusson in 1922 and 1928 rekindled the artist’s interest in the Scottish landscape and precipitated periods of concentrated productivity. It is curious, given Fergusson’s self-image as a Highlander, that he had so far remained impervious to the pictorial possibilities of this subject matter. But that was to change with his Highland tours, which resulted in a flurry of paintings. On the Road to the Isles painted in 1928 belongs to this series of works. The title suggests that Fergusson and John Ressich were possibly en route to Oban, known as ‘The gateway to the Isles’. Other paintings from this series include Storm around Ben Ledi, The Rocky Glen, A Puff of smoke near Milngavie and Looking over Killiecrankie, as with the present work they vividly register his response to the ever changing drama of the Scottish landscape. ‘The grandeur and variety of the vistas that confronted Fergusson on his travels brought out a Cézanne-like concern for pictorial structure and a richly hued palette’ (S. McGregor, exhibition catalogue, J.D. Fergusson, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland, 2013, p. 98). Strong in colour, this highland landscape shows a more sensitive awareness of the power of tone than in his earlier works.

Interestingly in 1928 the year that he painted On the Road to the Isles Fergusson had his second successful show in New York, this time at the Kraushaar gallery. In March 1931 Galeries Georges Petit held an important exhibition in Paris, Les Peintures Écossais, where a painting was acquired by the Musée Luxembourg in Paris. In 1932 On the Road to the Isles was shown at the Lefevre Gallery’s Fergusson exhibition in London, and along with Souvenir de Jumiège and The Bridge and Shiehallion, it was one of the key paintings in the exhibition.